On the road again

Our first stop was in Ulm – apparently the cloudiest city in Germany. Ulm didn’t let us down and indeed gave us clouds. In Ulm we visited Dominik Stepien, a PhD student in the battery lab at Helmholtz Institute of Ulm. Dominik’s supervisor, Dr Dominic Bresser could unfortunately not join. But we were in safe hands anyway!

So, to the fun part – what did we do there? In October last year we launched our instrument, Insplorion M8, to academia. We got in contact with Dr. Bresser – who was excited to try it out! Dominik got the fibre sensors in advance so he could build his cells with the sensor already mounted. When we arrived there, we were ready to get the instrument up and running and start cycling the batteries. After the training we got a lab tour. Their battery lab is incredible, and Fredrik still daydreams about it.

The second day of our trip, we headed northwest – to Karlsruhe and, together with Raimund Sauter, from our distributor Quantum Design – Europe,  we visited one of our customers – professor Hartmut Gliemann. He already had an Xnano in his lab, since 2013, and now he bought an Acoulyte probe. He and Nina Barzen, his master student, will use QCM-D and LSPR together to study surface-anchored metal-organic framework (SURMOFs). It is convenient to run an experiment on one sensor and use the combination of two techniques to understand what is happening on the surface. The narrow sensing depth is a real advantage when studying diffusion through a porous film (like a MOF or SURMOF).

Fredrik and I would like to thank for the hospitality of the two different universities. Together with the rest of the team at Insplorion, we are looking forward to the outcome!

/Sara